Getty Images was unsuccessful in its UK lawsuit against Stability AI at the High Court in London, where the judge rejected the main copyright claims and upheld a limited finding on trademark use.
Judge Joanna Smith said Getty had partly succeeded in trademark infringement related to Getty’s watermarks appearing in Stable Diffusion results, but described that finding as historic and extremely limited in scope.
The court dismissed Getty’s claim for secondary copyright infringement, finding that it had failed to establish the broader copyright violations it had alleged.
Getty, a provider of creative and editorial stock images, accused Stability AI of using its images to train the Stable Diffusion image generator. The first claimed that the model results reproduced his copyrighted works.
Midway through the trial, Getty withdrew part of its copyright case after failing to present evidence locating where Stable Diffusion was trained.
Getty’s remaining claims included trademark infringement and an allegation that Stability AI imported an AI model into the UK in breach of copyright.
The litigation centers on whether copyrighted image collections and licensed photo libraries can be used to train generative imaging systems that produce images from text prompts.
Because Getty dropped that charge and the court focused narrowly on watermark reproduction, the decision stops short of resolving whether training on copyrighted image datasets alone constitutes infringement. It also does not determine whether AI-generated images, such as those from Stable Diffusion, infringe when they resemble copyrighted works.
In a statement, Getty Images said: “Today’s ruling confirms that Stable Diffusion’s inclusion of Getty Images’ trademarks on AI-generated products infringed those marks.
“Most importantly, the Court rejected Stability AI’s attempt to hold the user liable for that infringement, confirming that responsibility for the presence of such marks lies with the model provider, which has control over the images used to train the model. This is a significant victory for intellectual property owners.”
Meanwhile, the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has referred a proposed merger between Getty Images and Shutterstock to a Phase 2 investigation following its Phase 1 review.
It cited concerns that the deal could lead to higher prices, worse trading conditions or a reduction in quality in the supply of editorial and archival images in the UK.
The CMA said both companies supply digital content, including photographs, illustrations, videos and music, and that a combined Getty and Shutterstock business would be worth more than £3bn.